This is not the kind of news that sets global warming scaremongers’ hearts aflutter:
Contrary to everything they told us during the record high hurricane season of 2005, hurricanes have not gotten more frequent and have not become more intense. It’s just the opposite, in fact.
Here’s how the Florida State University Center for Ocean-Atmosphere Prediction Studies reports the details:
The North Atlantic hurricane season has not produced a storm in over 3-weeks and, if no more develop, the season overall would rank as the slowest since the El Nino year of 1997. Hurricanes Bill and Fred accounted for over 82% of the Accumulated Cyclone Energy [ACE**] — a metric that combines intensity, duration, and frequency of hurricanes and tropical storms during a year. The remaining storms were weak, rather short-lived and unremarkable. Indeed, the Accumulated Cyclone Energy [ACE] of 44 ranks among the slowest during the past half-century.
Sure, say the skeptics, hurricanes may be down in the North Atlantic, but what about the rest of the world. Surely, frequency and intensity have increased elsewhere.
We hate to be bearers of bad news, but no, that’s not the case.
Elsewhere, the Northern Hemisphere and Global ACE when calculated either with 12- or 24-month running sums, remains just above historical 30-year lows. Indeed, the global ACE sunk to record low levels during the early summer prior to the typhoon activity in the Western Pacific and the hurricane activity in the Eastern Pacific. While it may seem like the world has experienced considerable tropical cyclone activity lately, 2009 as a whole is still well behind normal or climatology. The previous Southern Hemisphere cyclone season including the Southern Indian and Pacific Oceans along with the Australian region produced historically low levels of ACE (from Oct 2008 – Apr 2009). So a global sum during the past 12 or 24 months will simply show the depressed tropical cyclone activity experienced.
In summary, Gore lied, hurricanes died.
Source: Florida State University Center for Ocean-Atmosphere Prediction Studies
